This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

ST. CHARLES, Mo. — Pam Hupp will remain in prison after trying Friday to get her guilty plea dismissed in the murder of a man with disabilities.

Today the woman at the center of a nationally known murder investigation claimed –again – she was the victim.

Fox 2 was the only reporter in the courtroom when the judge ruled. No one disputed that Pam Hupp was out of time to file her motion to vacate and get out of prison. Hupp claimed the coronavirus kept her from filing on time.

St. Charles County Prosecutor Tim Lohmar said, “She’s going to use whatever she can, like she always has. She doesn’t have any problem bending the truth.”

Lohmar’s office fought off the latest claim from Hupp that she’s the victim. Hupp claimed it in 2016, when Fox 2 captured exclusive video of her arrest for the murder of Louis Gumpenberger. Hupp said the man with disabilities invaded her home, even though police tracked her cell phone to find she’d picked him up.

Lohmar said, “This woman is just deceptive. She’s just evil to her core, so this unfortunately comes as no surprise to us.”

In 2019 Hupp took a plea deal, admitting there was enough evidence to send her to prison for life. Then last December, she filed this motion saying she changed her mind about a plea deal and wanted it dismissed. She claimed her defense attorneys pressured her to take the deal.

Russ Faria said, “I’m not surprised.”

Russ Faria watched in court today. He’s the person Hupp tried framing for Gumpenberger’s murder.

Faria also spent nearly four years in prison for the 2011 murder of his wife Betsy Faria in Lincoln County. It was a wrongful conviction that was overturned when a judge ruled Pam Hupp could’ve been the killer.

Today’s hearing focused solely on Hupp’s conviction in Gumpenberger’s murder.

Hupp’s public defender acknowledged Hupp missed her February 2020 deadline to file a motion to dismiss her plea deal. Hupp filed it nearly eight months late, blaming COVID for the delay.

The prosecutor pointed out COVID did not lead to a lockdown at Hupp’s prison until April 2020. The prosecutor said Hupp couldn’t blame the virus because the lockdown was ten weeks after Hupp’s deadline to fight her plea deal.

After court Faria added, “Seeing somebody who just tries to make somebody’s life hard at every turn, it gets annoying at this point.”

The judge threw out Hupp’s case. He said the law says it’s too late to back out of her plea deal. Pam Hupp will remain in a Chillicothe prison for life.